I’ve been continuing to indulge myself with copious amounts of vampire manga. This time I picked up Midnight Secretary, which is about a woman who gets a new job, only to find out that her workaholic boss is also a vampire.

Kaya Satozuka is in the early stages of her career. She’s dedicated to her work, and will do whatever it takes to be successful. She dresses like a stereotypical librarian with glasses and a tight bun, because she looks really young and wants to be taken seriously. When she starts a new job, her new boss Kyohei immediately insults her looks, and tries to dismiss her. But Satozuka is stubborn and determined, and demands that he give her a chance and let her work speak for herself.

As I started to read about the office dynamics at play here, I felt really bad for Satozuka. Kyohei doesn’t treat women well, and doesn’t see Satozuka as a person. He comes off a wee bit Harvey Weinstein. Kyohei wants Satozuka to be like one of the (many) girls he dabbles with between meetings. Satozuka is really smart, and pretty quickly figures out that Kyohei is up to something with his dalliances. And she’s right–he’s actually a vampire, and he’s seeing all of these women because he’s secretly sucking their blood. So now her secretarial duties expand to scheduling his meals and trying to keep his secret. And of course an emergency comes up, and he ends up needing her blood to survive. And that’s when the romance begins–even though she’s not his type, he can’t stop thinking about how tasty her blood is. And even though she’s convinced that she’s just food to him, she finds herself constantly thinking about the moment when he drank her blood.

Midnight Secretary Vol. 1 was a quick and fun read. The only thing that was a bit frustrating was that it was pretty obvious that this was originally serialized, and so there’s a lot of repetition in each chapter of what happened in the sections before. That’s great if you’re reading a chapter every few weeks, but less good if you’re reading it all at once.

One thing that did really work for me is that Midnight Secretary is a manga about adults. I’ve been getting really into anime and manga over the past few years, but I’m always frustrated when the vast majority of stories seem to revolve around high school and teenage characters. I prefer reading about grown-ups doing grown-up things, especially when there’s romance involved. So the fact that Midnight Secretary is about career-driven adults who sometimes need to drink blood is nice.

Verdict: Will I continue with the series? Probably, but this is going to be one to add to the if-it’s-on-sale-at-Better-World-Books watchlist, versus the pay-full-price-at-B&N-or-Amazon list.